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Owner of The Hill Helped Wife Land Unpaid White House Role, Says Report

Jimmy Finkelstein reportedly discussed the role with White House lawyers before his wife, ex CNN producer Pamela Gross, was brought in.

The owner of political news site The Hill reportedly helped his wife secure an unpaid White House role—but readers were never told about it. Politico reports that Jimmy Finkelstein discussed the role with White House lawyers shortly before his wife, former CNN producer Pamela Gross, was brought in as an unpaid adviser to Melania Trump. Gross reportedly helped the first lady for around six months between August 2017 to February 2018. Politico obtained a July 2017 email from Finkelstein to Stefan Passantino, the White House’s top ethics lawyer at the time, saying, “Hope we can get contract soon as Pamela looks forward serving [sic] the country and the First Lady.” The arrangement was reportedly not mentioned in The Hill’s articles about Trump during the time period.

Finkelstein told Politico that he did not believe the arrangement posed a conflict of interest, saying, “Pamela was proud to help the first lady serve our country and the nation’s children in this way. For Pamela, this was not simply a very worthwhile effort. It was deeply meaningful on a personal level. As the daughter of a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor sent to the Auschwitz death camp as a child, she felt that joining the first lady in helping children, here and around the globe, was tremendously humbling and personally rewarding.”